


Something I Can Never Have

by xylodemon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Breathplay, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-21
Updated: 2005-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-29 09:48:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/318587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Harry and Draco are both searching for something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something I Can Never Have

**Author's Note:**

> Title and headers from Nine Inch Nails, with all apologies.

**i still recall the taste of your tears  
echoing your voice just like the ringing in my ears.**

 

It might be morning, because the house-elves are serving breakfast. It might be spring, because Dean's West Ham Football calendar is open to April. Harry doesn't know, can't quite be sure. The eggs and bacon have the wooden, sandy taste of Transfiguration, and Hermione stopped marking the days the morning after Ron disappeared.

Hogwarts is the Order's headquarters now, only there is no longer much of an Order to speak of. Dumbledore's dead, and Moody's finally gone round the twist. Professor McGonagall does her best, but she's McGonagall, not Dumbledore, and Lupin is a survivor but he has never been a leader.

Lupin's a professor again, teaching Defence Against the Darks Arts. It's also taught by McGonagall, Flitwick, Shacklebolt, and Tonks, because it's the only class the students have.

He's also a werewolf again, because the Wolfsbane left with Snape. Tonks is more than willing to try, but Potions was her worst subject in school and she can only get her hands on half of what she needs.

Harry wanders the school like he's under a spell, glassy-eyed and silent. At night he pretends he can still hear Ron snoring, pretends his shoulder isn't wet with Hermione's tears.

**my favorite dreams of you still wash ashore  
scraping through my head 'till I don't want to sleep anymore**

Malfoy Manor has been occupied Death Eaters, and it no longer looks like Draco's home. It's a hideout now, a safe house, a place with bedrolls on the sitting room floor and a dining table stretched so far it creaks and groans and sags in the middle.

Aunt Bellatrix follows him all over the house, empty eyes and false smiles and words that drip with poison. Her voice is soft and sweet when she says he must practice his Occlumency, but her lips curve in a way that makes Draco think she just wants inside his head.

Dumbledore is dead like the Dark Lord asked, and that seems to be enough, but Draco wonders if the Dark Lord knows the truth. Snape has promised not to give him away, and Draco believes he hasn't, but the Dark Lord regards him with cold, stony silence and watches him with accusatory eyes.

Draco's nightmares are of blood and bones and Muggles, and he wakes from the terrified, his heart beating in his chest. In the morning, Aunt Bellatrix smiles from her seat next to the Dark Lord and when she gazes at Draco across the table her smile cuts like a knife.

 

**you always were the one to show me how  
back then I couldn't do the things that I can do now**

 

Harry stopped taking Defence when Professor Lupin told him with sad, empty eyes that there was nothing more for Harry to learn. If Harry needs to learn more, know more, find more, it will have to come from one of Hermione's books or the secrets McGonagall is still trying to unlock from Dumbledore's office.

He teaches sometimes, when Lupin is sick or tired, or when the others have simply had enough, rounding the students together and drilling them like he once did with Dumbledore's Army. He wishes they still were Dumbledore's Army, wishes they were still a handful of kids who thought they were making a difference when they hadn't even understood what they were fighting against.

The older students watch him, mimic him, practicing their curses and hexes with pity in their eyes and determination in their jaw. The younger students stammer and squeak when they speak, their wands slipping from their hands, and they look at Harry with slack jaws and a hope that borders on faith.

He sees Malfoy in the colour of Creevey's hair and the angle of Seamus' chin, and he hates until he can hardly breathe and his vision blackens and blurs around the edges.

**this thing is slowly taking me apart  
grey would be the color if I had a heart**

Aunt Bellatrix tells him his father is dead with tears on her cheeks and a voice that catches in her throat. She tries to placate him with murmurs and soft sounds, but her fingers are cold as she strokes his hair and face, and when he closes his eyes he can see the blood on her hands.

Ice settles in his stomach, burning and cold, and emptiness hollows out his heart and chest. It's an ache of loss, but it's also an ache of fear, and when his mother disappears he simply goes numb because he realizes it's only a matter of time.

Greyback sits next to him at dinner, with the smell of sweat and dirt and death on his skin and copper staining the corners of his mouth. He smiles at Draco as he eats, his lips curling around raw meat and a tongue that checks the sharpness of his teeth. The Dark Lord is silent and thoughtful, watching Draco with eyes the colour of the blood running rivers down Greyback's hands.

When he pulls on his cloak that night a yellowed roll of parchment falls out, seventeen and a half inches covered in Snape's neat, precise script.

 

**in this place it seems like such a shame  
though it all looks different now, i know it's still the same**

 

Harry fills with rage when he sees Malfoy, rage so hot and thick it bubbles over in the form of shattered windows and flickering lights. Lupin is silent, his eyes lingering on Malfoy's face, and the scratches marring the pale skin make Lupin growl in the back of his throat.

Malfoy keeps his head high as McGonagall questions him, and tells her to take the parchment before she kills him.

The Half-Blood Prince's handwriting scrawls across it, mocking Harry as it spells out the information McGonagall and Hermione have been unable to find. Harry doesn't want it, not from Malfoy, not from _Snape_ , and the flames that flare along the bottom take two inches before Shacklebolt pulls it out of his hands.

When he finally does read it at McGonagall's insistence he laughs, laughs like Sirius had laughed when he'd confronted Pettigrew all those years ago. The answer stares up at him, black ink on yellow, and he laughs because it's so simple, so unbelievably simple, it's hard to believe it is true.

Pure blood to unlock it, loved blood to destroy it.

Harry looks at the blue sprawl of veins in his wrist, looks at Malfoy, and smiles.

**everywhere I look you're all I see  
just a fading fucking reminder of who I used to be.**

McGonagall offers him a place to stay by way of refusing to let him leave. They say it's for the best, say it's safest, but they don't trust him, they don't like him, and the don't invite him to their meetings. Draco tries to be affronted, but he cannot find the energy. He doubts he knows enough about the Dark Lords plans to be of any use beyond the parchment Snape had left him.

Potter dogs his steps, trailing him through the hallways like a ghost. He never speaks, hardly seems to breathe. He just watches Draco with eyes sharpened into the Killing Curse and his jaw set into a firm, hard line. He blinks owlishly when Draco talks to him, hate simmering behind his glasses, his mouth parted around a sentence that died somewhere in the back of his throat.

He wishes Potter would hit him if that's what he means to do, wishes Potter would get on with it instead of just watching and waiting. Potter's hands twitch at his sides, fingers stretching and flexing like he's imagining Draco's throat underneath them.

When Draco falls asleep, it's fitful, and his dreams are green like Potter's eyes.

 

**you make this all go away, you make this all go away  
i'm down to just one thing, and I'm starting to scare myself**

 

He doesn't know why he kisses Malfoy. Maybe because Hermione is crying again, maybe because the silver light streaming through the castle windows has Lupin howling in what's left of the old Potions classroom again.

Maybe he thinks warm lips and soft skin will chase away the emptiness gnawing at his heart.

He realizes, as Malfoy's hand slips inside his trousers, that Malfoy is the only person in the castle he can do this with. Malfoy's the only person who's here for himself, the only person who doesn't care who Harry is.

Malfoy's eyes slide closed as Harry kisses down his chest, and there are more scratches here, long and thin, faded into pearly scars. He whimpers as Harry's tongue traces along the raised flesh, and when Harry's mouth finally finds his cock he tangles his thin, white fingers in Harry's messy hair.

His pushes his cock inside Malfoy's body with slow thrusts that make Malfoy whine and arch off the bed. His fingers flutter over Malfoy's neck, but Malfoy doesn't tense or pull away. Harry's thumb traces the line of his windpipe, but he doesn't push down, because it's Malfoy, and he doesn't trust himself to stop in time.

**you make this all go way, you make this all go way  
i just want something, i just want something I can never have**

Weasley is bloody and broken when they find him, but he's alive. His freckles run together under a mass of purplish bruises, but he can walk and talk, and Potter's face splits with the first smile Draco's seen since he returned to Hogwarts. Weasley even coaxes smiles from Granger and the werewolf, and McGonagall's normally harsh Scottish brogue takes a softer tone.

Potter and Granger disappear upstairs with Weasley, and Draco wanders the castle alone. He stands in the Astronomy Tower with a strange weight pulling at his stomach, watching the sun hide beneath the horizon and the stars blanket the sky.

He finds Potter on in his bed, naked and lacking his new-found smile. He kisses Draco hard, with a tongue that fucks his mouth and teeth that nip a bit too hard, and he wastes no time getting his hand around Draco's cock, his fingers curled tightly and his thumb teasing over the head.

He wonders what Potter's looking for, because he must not have found it when Weasley returned. He wonders what Potter's looking for, because whatever it is, Draco doubts Potter will find it here. Draco doesn't even know what he is looking for, himself.


End file.
